There's a certain lifestyle aspect where my high school friend dropped a pulled junkyard engine in the bed of his truck and shoved it into place and strapped it

There's a certain lifestyle aspect where my high school friend dropped a pulled junkyard engine in the bed of his truck and shoved it into place and strapped it down and he doesn't care about the interior of his truck bed, its "outdoors" for hauling "outdoors" rated objects. Technically my wife's van could carry that engine very easily but the process would almost certainly destroy the carpet and leather seats and maybe some windows and the bumper cover etc. My buddy had hoists on each end of the trip to insert and remove the junkyard engine. This is widely understood in industry and construction in general and using a crane with a pickup truck is no big deal. With a van I guess you could use a forklift and pray the inevitable damage to the interior doesn't turn the vehicle into an instant insurance writeoff, but ... Imagine for example how easy it would be to wipe out the stereo speakers or the wiring for the GPS in the back of a van vs a seemingly indestructible truck bed. The older the truck the tougher they were built and the more likely the owner doesn't care if its beat up, so you can toss bricks into trucks and similar behavior that would not be tolerated with a van. I will say the best way to haul 1000+ pounds of yard landscape rock is to pay home depot $59.99 to have truck delivery with a forklift drop the pallet within inches of where I asked. I could have bought a $75K pickup truck and loaded and unloaded all that rock myself by hand, but sixty bucks sounds like a better deal LOL. If I had a full time landscaper job the numbers would be different...